


atlas for a savior

by kathillards



Series: diamonds in the sky [5]
Category: Kamen Rider Decade, Kamen Rider Gaim, Kamen Rider Ghost, Kamen Rider Wizard
Genre: Multi, adventures in world-hopping, crossovers for everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 23:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12493508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: Three different girls Natsumi meets throughout the worlds, and how they compare to the three boys she loves.





	atlas for a savior

**Author's Note:**

> for week of toku ladies, day one. the prompt was "top 3" so i guess this is sort of top 3 natsumi crossovers + top 3 natsumi ships which should be obvious to anyone. one day i'll stop writing ot4 cheesiness that always has the same ending, but not today.

World-hopping is surprisingly easy, once you get the hang of it.

“Where are you going to go first?” Tsukasa asks her, the first time she sets out on her own. Normally, he’s the one leaving her behind.

Natsumi adjusts her beanie, checks to make sure Kiva-la is there, and shrugs. “Wherever it takes me.”

Tsukasa raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. She’s stealing his modus operandi, after all. Behind him, Yusuke waves cheerfully.

“You’ll be back soon, right, Natsumi?” Yusuke asks her.

The room feels a little empty without Daiki.

Natsumi smiles at the two of them, then turns and walks into the backdrop, the photography studio melting into nothingness behind her.

.

Her first two worlds are pretty basic. Find the monster, fight them, leave it a little better than you found it. The Savior-of-Worlds model of world-hopping. She thinks Tsukasa would be proud, if she ever catches up to him in one of these worlds.

It’s the third one where Kiva-la squeaks, “There’s a Rider already in this world!”

Natsumi goes on the hunt. His name is Wizard, he wears red and has a magic ring, and he fights something called Phantoms. Pretty traditional, as far as Rider worlds go. She expects the other one, too, the blue-and-gold Rider who shows up in the news footage.

What she doesn’t expect is the girl.

.

“You were wrong,” she mutters to Kiva-la, as they watch the battle ongoing in front of them. “There’s a whole _team_ of Riders.”

“Well, forgive _me_ ,” Kiva-la huffs, fluttering around her head. Natsumi ignores her, watching the trio of Riders, all in identical suits except for the colors – orange, green, blue – fighting in sync.

Well. Mostly in sync. She can tell they haven’t been together nearly as long as she has been with Tsukasa and Daiki and Yusuke. The four of them have been in sync for a long time. These three are fumbling their way through the fight, individually gifted but not in tune with each other.

Still, some part of her aches. As in sync as her team is, they haven’t properly fought together in so long. She misses the feeling of being able to reach for Tsukasa in battle and find him there, of seeing Yusuke rush past her to barrel into a Shocker grunt, of watching Daiki vault over her head to protect her from an ambush.

Orange takes a hit for Green, and gets thrown to the other side of the street. Natsumi is on her feet in an instant, letting the adrenaline of the battlefield fuel her movements.

One of the grunts tries to snag her before she reaches the Rider. The other two are far enough away that they can’t help. Natsumi turns to punch it, and then a wave of golden magic washes over her – _through_ her, and impacts the monster.

It crumbles to the ground. Natsumi turns and watches as the girl lowers her hand, her ring still glowing orange.

“Magic,” says Kiva-la gleefully, as if she hasn’t guessed.

Natsumi kneels down next to the girl. She doesn’t say anything, just surveys the helmet, the orange visor, the eyes she knows are looking into hers from beneath the mask.

The girl speaks first. “Who are you?”

Natsumi opens her mouth, but then Kiva-la shrieks, “You have to transform!”

.

After the battle, she sits down with the girl and carefully pulls bandages out of her bag to wrap around her broken arm. The girl watches her, quietly suspicious, but accepts the help, since her teammates – if they _are_ her teammates – disappeared to fight elsewhere.

“I’m Natsumi,” she says. “I’m… a passing-through Kamen Rider.”

“Oh.” The girl considers this for a moment. “I’m Mayu. Kamen Rider Mage. I guess.”

Natsumi sets the bandage over her shoulder and looks at her searchingly. “You guess?”

Mayu shrugs a little awkwardly, with one arm in a sling. “I’m kind of new to this,” she says with a half-smile that seems close to humorless. “I mean, there used to be… more of us.”

“More mages?”

“More Riders,” she clarifies. “They were called Wizard and Beast. But… they’re not really here, anymore.”

“Sometimes people leave,” Natsumi says after a moment. “Riders are good at that.”

Mayu laughs, looks down. “I wish I could just leave,” she says with a sigh. “But this is my home. I have to protect it.” She glances sideways at Natsumi. “You know what I mean?”

Natsumi doesn’t. She has a home, but it’s always changing. The photography studio goes with her. The boys either come with her or go off on their own. Home is where they are. Her home world is long lost to her, a part of her she keeps tucked away in an inner pocket of her heart, far from anyone who might use it against her.

“Do you really want to leave?” she asks, hit with the sudden and irrepressible urge to steal this girl away and take her wherever she wants to go. Mayu is young, has her whole life ahead of her – if she wants to leave, there’s no reason she can’t. She has power, magic at her fingertips, the whole world ahead of her.

But Mayu shakes her head. “No, I suppose not. I love it here. I love…being a Rider. Even when Haruto and Nitoh aren’t here. I couldn’t leave everyone. I chose to protect them, and I will.”

Natsumi runs her fingers over a light bruise on the inside of her wrist, from one of the monsters she’d just fought, and thinks how hard it is to stay in one place anymore.

Mayu’s hand presses against hers briefly. “Do you want to come back with me? I can introduce you to everyone.”

Her smile is so earnest, it’s hard to say no.

.

There’s an emptiness to the ring shop Mayu takes her to, even with how full of life its inhabitants are. The ringmaker, the apprentice, the cop, and Mayu. All four of them are happy to meet her, comfortable together, like they’ve spent a long time being together.

She wonders where Mayu’s other two Rider teammates went. But the emptiness, she finds, is in the back room where a crystal ball sits unattended, and in the spaces where another body would have fit on the couch, but doesn’t.

“Did you lose someone?” she asks Mayu quietly over dinner. “Someone who lived here?”

Mayu’s gaze falls. “Her name was Koyomi. She – Haruto loved her. That’s why he’s not here anymore, either.”

Natsumi looks around. Mr. Wajima is in his corner, rings all around him, speaking quietly to Shunpei about the intricacies of magic. Rinko had headed off to the station earlier, working a case. The emptiness is in the cold and the dust and the way Shunpei keeps looking up to see someone who isn’t there.

She thinks about what would happen if she lost Tsukasa, or Yusuke, or Daiki. Or if she died, left them behind.

It’s almost happened enough times.

“I’m sorry,” she remembers to say, a little belatedly. She wishes that it mattered. She wishes, suddenly, for Tsukasa’s camera, so she could capture the way the ring store looks and feels, or get a picture of Haruto and Koyomi and see if they can’t come back that way.

Of course, miracles never work twice, and she’s pretty sure she’s used all hers up on Tsukasa.

Mayu shakes her head. “It’s been a few months. Haruto’s just traveling, looking for…” She breaks off, clearly remembering a secret she’s not supposed to tell. “He’ll come back eventually.”

Natsumi hears the other part: _Koyomi won’t_.

“What about the other Riders?” she asks. “The two you were fighting with, don’t they come here, too?”

The ring shop feels a little like the photography studio, in a way. The same energy humming in the air, the same sense of power, of _this is where something starts_ , of _this is where we build something together._

Mayu says, “Not really. One of them is married, he has a wife and a kid to look after. The other one… he was closest to Nitoh. And Nitoh is traveling, too.”

So many travelers, Natsumi thinks but doesn’t say. Remembers her own words: _Riders are good at leaving._

Sometimes, she thinks, they might be too good at it.

.

She lingers around town for a bit longer than she should, given that there’s no world-ending catastrophe about to happen. Maybe she’s hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive two Riders, Haruto and Nitoh. To understand why they left. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to go home.

Daiki shows up in the ring shop a few days later and nicks two magic stones before anyone notices him.

“Hey,” Natsumi says, catching his arm as he comes out of the store. “Give those back.”

Daiki shoots her a betrayed stare. “Natsu-melon, I can’t believe you came all the way here just to stop me from stealing two little stones.”

Shunpei comes out from behind the door, on the verge of a panic. “It’s you!” he yells, lunging for Daiki. “Those are _my_ stones! They’re for Haruto!”

“Who’s Haruto?” Daiki asks, dismissive as ever, and sidesteps Shunpei easily. He doesn’t bother shaking Natsumi off, though, so she grasps his wrist and tugs, sharply. Daiki twists and almost falls at her feet.

“I got this,” she tells Shunpei, and wrests the two stones out of Daiki’s pockets, tossing them to him. He looks both pleased and annoyed, disappearing back into the store with them.

Daiki frowns at her as she drags him away. “What’s the big idea?”

“What are you doing here?” she asks him when they’re a good distance away from any other shops he might want to rob. “Are you following me?”

He snorts. “Don’t flatter yourself. I happen to be following a trail. Did _you_ know that store has the best magic rings in the country?”

Natsumi crosses her arms and levels an unimpressed look at him. It takes a moment – Daiki has always been more resistant to her methods than the other two – but before she can decide to pressure point him, he wilts.

“I got bored,” he mutters. “Tsukasa showed up here a couple months ago… thought I’d see what the fuss was about.”

“Bored,” Natsumi repeats incredulously. “You, Kaito Daiki, world-hopper and thief. Got bored.”

“It’s not always super exciting,” Daiki defends. “Besides, with you gone, Tsukasa is useless company. Doesn’t wanna do anything fun. He actually met this Haruto guy, you know.”

Natsumi tilts her head. “Is that what you’ve been waiting for?” she asks. “To meet Haruto so you can, what, steal from him and prove your superiority?”

Daiki scowls at her. “I don’t need to prove what is inherently obvious.”

Natsumi rolls her eyes and turns to go.

“Hey,” Daiki calls after her. “How long are you planning on staying?”

“I don’t know,” she says over her shoulder. “Do you want me to come home?”

Silence, for a heartbeat. Then, he says, “Whenever you want, Natsu-melon.”

When she turns back around, he’s gone.

.

“Are you leaving?” Mayu asks the day she actually does decide to go, although home isn’t on her list of destinations just yet. “It’s been nice having you around.”

Natsumi smiles, and finds it tentatively returned.

“I haven’t met any other girl Riders before,” Mayu continues, playing with her ring. “It’s all just boys around here, and then me.”

“You do pretty well for yourself,” Natsumi tells her. “You lead the team. You protect the city. You do a good job, with or without Haruto.”

A genuine smile blossoms on Mayu’s face. “You haven’t even met Haruto,” she protests softly.

Natsumi smirks. “Did I ever tell you about my boys, back home?” Mayu shakes her head. “Two of them, they’re always traveling. Usually fighting. Sometimes fighting _each other_. And the third, Yusuke, he stays with me when he can, but he has his own things to do. We all do. So, I keep the photography studio safe for them.”

“I didn’t see a photography studio here,” Mayu points out, brow furrowed.

Natsumi sighs, looking across the street as if that would make Hikari Studios magically appear. “No, it didn’t come with me this time. I guess the boys need it more than me right now.”

She turns back to Mayu, crossing the space between them to squeeze her hand. “What I’m saying is, sometimes they’ll just leave. And I have to protect our home – our world. That’s just as important as the ridiculous fights they get into out in the world, right?”

Mayu nods slowly. “But… you’re out here now. Traveling. Right? You’re a _passing-through Kamen Rider_.”

It feels important when she says it. When Natsumi says it, it’s just a hollow echo of Tsukasa.

“Sometimes,” Natsumi says carefully, “everyone has to leave. That doesn’t mean they won’t come back.”

Mayu bites her lip. “You think Haruto and Nitoh will come back?”

Natsumi shakes her head. “I think you will,” she says, and Mayu’s eyes go wide. “If you ever want to leave – you’ll come back. This is your home, right? It’ll be okay.”

“It will?” Mayu asks in a near-whisper.

Natsumi smiles at her. “It has you. That’s what matters. You don’t have to leave now, or soon, or even for years – it took me four years to work up the nerve. But you don’t have to wait around for them forever, either.”

Mayu swallows. “One day,” she agrees, quiet and thoughtful. “One day I’ll see the world like you do.”

.

She doesn’t go back home immediately. Yusuke finds her a few worlds later in a city where the vines are overgrown and there’s the stench of something rotten in the air constantly.

He tells her, lightly, “Tsukasa was just here.”

Natsumi isn’t really surprised, but she glances at him sharply anyway. “Here? Why here?”

Yusuke shrugs and spreads his arms around, gesturing to the empty park. The two of them are sitting on a stage that’s littered with old streamers and glitter, and the same vines that pervade everywhere.

“Zawame City,” he says. “He was here helping out their Rider. Something about Heisei and Showa.”

Natsumi sends him a quizzical look but he doesn’t seem to have any answers, so she only says, “Where is he now, then?”

Yusuke sits down next to her and smiles that smile of his, always impossibly bright. “Who knows? You know Tsukasa, never stays in one world too long. And,” he pauses, wrinkling his nose a little. “This world’s really gone to shit since he was here.”

“No kidding,” Natsumi agrees, toeing an old streamer. “What was this? A dance party?”

“I hear their Rider dances,” Yusuke says thoughtfully. “Wanna go find him?’

“You can go find him,” she tells him. “I’m gonna look around.”

.

Truthfully, she has very little interest in meeting other Riders anymore. That was always Tsukasa’s job – finding them, connecting with them, saving them or killing them. He knows every Rider she could possibly find. If she comes across them, she’ll stay to talk, or help, but mostly, she wants to see the worlds.

Zawame City is a cesspool of a world, though. Already overrun with monsters and the creepy fruit vines. It has the feeling of something that could be magnificent – the giant tower in the center, gleaming into the sky – but was never fully realized, or perhaps, stopped forcefully before it could be realized.

Still, she stays, and she can’t explain why. Maybe knowing that it’s the world of a Rider keeps her anchored here.

She finds a girl leaving money for food inside an empty store and stops to watch her. There are so few people here anymore, and those that are seem to care only about survival. It’s hard to blame them, but this girl continues to pay for her things, even at the advent of the apocalypse.

“Can I help you?” she asks when she notices Natsumi. Then, her brow crinkles. “Are you from around here?”

“No,” Natsumi says, and has to resist the urge to say she’s a passing-through Kamen Rider. “My name’s Natsumi. I was just wondering… what happened here.”

The girl looks at her in soft sorrow. “You don’t know…” She rallies herself and all but skips over to Natsumi. “I’m Mai. I can take you to one of our safe houses, if you follow me.”

Natsumi doesn’t tell her that she doesn’t really need a safe house, and follows after her, waiting for the answer.

Mai speaks slowly, as if gathering her thoughts. “There’s an invasion,” she says, and pauses to point at vines curling around the brick of an old building. “It’s something called the Forest of Helheim, from another dimension. It brings monsters into our world, and turns us into monsters if we eat its fruits.”

Natsumi eyes the little purple fruits blooming on the vines with disgust. “People eat those?”

“It’s easy to be tempted,” Mai says with a sad smile. “But we have people fighting, too. Good people – my friends. I wish…” She pauses, shakes her head. “Never mind. Just know, we’re working on getting everyone out of here.”

“Are you a Rider?” Natsumi asks carefully. That ‘ _I wish…_ ’ had been telling, but it’s always best to make sure.

Mai’s smile seems to get sadder. “No, not me. There’s a lot of Riders around here, but all I do is help. And dance, when I can.” She heaves a sigh and shifts the weight of her grocery bag on her shoulder. “It’s not really enough. But we’re trying.”

“Trying is enough,” Natsumi says, and Mai stops to look at her in surprise. “Believe me. All anyone can ever do is try.”

“I suppose so,” Mai says with a thoughtful hum. “It just always feels like we’re winning battles, but losing the war. Zawame City used to be so much prettier than this – there was so much life. We all used to dance.”

“Do you not dance anymore?” Natsumi asks, voice softening.

“I do,” Mai says fiercely. “I always will. But right now, there’s more important things.”

Before Natsumi can ask what these ‘more important things’ are, one of them chooses that moment to attack them.

“Kiva-la!” she calls, as Mai jumps back in surprise. Kiva-la flutters out and latches onto her hand; Natsumi holds her out and says, “ _Henshin_.”

Mai gasps at the transformation. Natsumi steps in front of her and draws her sword. The monster, an oddly-shaped green thing that skitters around like an insect and makes angry grunting noises at her, jumps forward.

“Stay back!” she calls, and then she moves. The feeling of her sword slashing through the monster is a lot more satisfying than she had thought it would be.

.

“You’re an Armored Rider,” Mai breathes, still a little in shock, as Natsumi comes back to her normal self. “Why didn’t you say so – I have to take you to meet Kouta, and Kaito, and Zack and—”

“Calm down,” Natsumi says, holding back a smile. “I’m just a passing-through Kamen Rider. You may have seen my friend around a while back… his name’s Decade.”

Mai’s eyes widen. “What—yes, of course, I met Decade! I mean—Kouta met him, really, but I was there. He went around gathering other Riders but you weren’t one of them.”

Natsumi ignores that pang of hurt. “There’s a lot more Riders out there than you know of,” she says simply. “Whole worlds out there. Don’t worry so much about it. If you need help, they’ll come.”

“If we need help…” Mai looks around at the remnants of the monster, and the ruins of her city. “Why haven’t they come to help us now, then? We’re – we’re dying.” Her shoulders deflate as she says this, like all the optimism has gone out of her. “Where are they? They all came months ago, but now…”

Natsumi doesn’t have an answer.

.

Mai takes her back to their base, a garage where most of them seem to be camping out. She looks carefully at Natsumi, then says, “You’re welcome to stay, if you want. We always welcome extra help.”

“I’ll look around,” Natsumi says, not wanting to intrude on a whole group of Riders again. “Thank you.”

Mai nods and darts up the stairs and into the garage. Natsumi sighs and leans back against the wall. It takes about twenty minutes for Yusuke to find her.

“Where have you been?” he asks her, tweaking a strand of her hair in concern. It’s a lot more dirty than it had been a few hours ago.

“Fighting monsters,” she tells him. “You?”

Yusuke cracks a grin. “Fighting monsters,” he echoes. “Met up with a few Riders. They’re good kids.”

“Yeah,” Natsumi says, tugging on the edge of her sleeve. “How many are there?”

“A lot,” Yusuke says, dropping back against the wall next to her. “Like, way more than usual. I guess maybe it’s because only the Riders have stayed behind, though.”

“Other people stay behind, too,” Natsumi points out. “People who aren’t Riders. Yusuke… we have to stay and help this world. They’re almost _done_. Their whole city is lost to these monsters.”

“Not all of it,” Yusuke points out, unfailingly optimistic. “These Riders are doing a good job. You don’t have to worry about them, they’ll get the job done.”

Natsumi stares at him, searching, and he winces away from her gaze. “Tsukasa told you something,” she says flatly.

“Just… that we shouldn’t get caught up here,” Yusuke mutters. “This world – it’s actually two worlds. Maybe more. And they’re colliding in a really bad way. If we get caught in the middle – you know, with our abilities – it could spell disaster.”

“But we have to help!”

“We are!” Yusuke says, taking her hand before she can work herself into a rage. “But we won’t help by being there for their final battles. We might just make everything worse.”

Natsumi narrows her eyes. “I don’t like this. We’re Kamen Riders, it’s our duty to help.”

“We’re doing what we can,” Yusuke promises. “That’s why Tsukasa was here, too. But this is their fight. Not ours.”

He doesn’t say it, but she hears it anyway: _We’ve already had ours._

Flashes of Tsukasa on a throne, Yusuke on the ground, Daiki with his gun pointed at Tsukasa’s head pass through her mind, and Natsumi sinks down to the ground, head in her hands.

“What have we become?” she asks Yusuke in a whisper when he sits down next to her. “We’ve turned into Kiva. Abandoning the Riders that come after us to their fates.”

She remembers: a space between worlds, and a Rider with cold eyes telling her _Decade doesn’t have a story._

“That’s not true,” he murmurs, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “That’s not who we are. We’re doing all we can. And Gaim and Baron and everyone else – they will do what they can. That’s what being a Kamen Rider is about.”

She leans into him and his warmth helps, but only a little. It’s hard to shake the feeling that despite his words, Yusuke knows exactly what they’re becoming, and doesn’t know how to stop it any more than she does.

.

On her last day in Zawame – she hasn’t planned it, but she knows she can’t stay for too long; the edges of the world are starting to crumble, and Yusuke has already left – she takes Mai out for fruit smoothies.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help more,” Natsumi says, staring down into the depths of her strawberry-banana swirl. “I wish… I wish I could stay.”

Mai blinks at her, looking as young as she is for once. “Why can’t you?”

“Forces beyond my control,” Natsumi sighs. “If I stay, I might put you all in more danger than if I just left.”

Mai considers this for a moment, then says, “Well, then, that’s not your fault,” and nods, as if that’s all there is to it.

Natsumi stares at her, stunned. “What—you’re not mad?”

“Of course not.” Mai’s smile is far more genuine than she thinks she deserves. “We have a lot of Riders here, Natsumi. A lot of really good people working to save us. And I believe they will. If you have to leave, I understand.”

Natsumi spins her straw around aimlessly in her smoothie. “I want to stay,” she confides. “I want to – I guess I want to feel like I can help. But I can’t.”

She wonders, absently, if this is how Tsukasa feels, always going to worlds to help them, always being told he has to destroy them instead. Or let them destroy themselves. How he felt when he killed all those Riders and they said it was his fault.

She supposes she should feel grateful, that Mai isn’t as cold as the Riders.

“We’ll be okay,” Mai assures her, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “We’ve suffered a lot. So have you, I bet. Sometimes, people take different paths.” Her eyes go faraway and unfocused for a minute. “I used to see—there was a girl, who looked like me, but different. She knew things I didn’t.”

Natsumi feels an odd hum fill the room, like she’s learning some sacred information. A chill goes down her body. Mai seems so very different for just a beat long enough.

“Maybe I’ll see her again,” Mai says, bringing her back to Earth. A smile crosses her lips. “Maybe I’ll see you again, too.”

“Yeah,” Natsumi says, voice soft. “Maybe you will.”

But somehow, as she heads out to the borders of Zawame City that afternoon, she can’t help but think that even if she comes back, she might never see Mai again the way she had been: full of light, and full of life.

.

She goes back home for a while after that, too unsettled by Zawame in a way she hadn’t been by Wizard’s world, or any of the other worlds she’d visited alone.

The photography studio is empty when she comes back. There’s a note from Grandpa, and food in the fridge. Natsumi ignores it, sits down on the couch, and tries to think about something else, anything else other than the vines and the haunted looks on everyone’s faces and the monsters who seemed so human underneath their skin.

She feels itchy all over by the time the door opens. She has no idea how long it’s been since she’s come home. Minutes. Hours. Maybe days.

“Natsumi,” says Tsukasa, and she doesn’t look up until she feels his weight sink down into the couch next to her. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

“Have I?” she asks, more snappy than she maybe should be. “As long as you disappear?”

Tsukasa’s brow knits down. “That’s not fair, I—”

“Forget it,” Natsumi says, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter. I was just—somewhere, and it scared me.”

“Somewhere,” Tsukasa repeats, and his shoulder presses into hers in a show of comfort. “How scary was it?”

She appreciates that he doesn’t ask where, even though she knows he’s probably guessed. He’s been to Zawame, too, after all.

“Two worlds,” she says, interlacing her fingers to demonstrate. “Curling up around each other in the worst of ways. Eating each other up. That shouldn’t happen.”

“No,” Tsukasa agrees. “It shouldn’t. But sometimes, it does. Do you remember… when I killed the Riders, and the worlds were all converging, all of us in the same world when we shouldn’t have been?”

Natsumi frowns. “You’re saying it’s like that? But you fixed that.”

“ _You_ fixed that,” he says, nudging her in the arm. “You and Daiki and Yusuke, you brought me back. We fixed it together. And these new Riders… they’ll fix their world, too.”

“Sure,” she says, because it’s exactly what Yusuke had said. “Are you staying the night?”

Tsukasa looks startled at her subject change, but nods. “Yusuke’s coming back, too. And… maybe Daiki.”

“Maybe,” Natsumi snorts.

Tsukasa flashes her a grin. “It’ll be just like old times.”

.

‘Old times’ turns into a week, then two weeks. Nobody seems particularly inclined to leave first this time around. She wonders if maybe it’s her, and how they can sense the way Zawame is clinging to her like a bad memory, or maybe it’s them and how they all seem a little haunted in different ways since they each left on their own.

Maybe it’s that they never really should have been separated in the first place.

But Daiki leaves first, like he always does. “Things to steal, you know,” he quips, and points finger-guns at her. “See you around, Natsu-melon.”

“Don’t hurry back,” she tells him, which is a lie, and he grins, pretends to shoot her, and heads off through the door.

“I’m going, too,” Natsumi says to the other two, and they both look up from their game of cards in surprise. “I have more to see. On my own.”

“Are you sure you don’t want company?” Yusuke asks, frowning. “I can go—”

“No, stay.” Natsumi nods at Tsukasa. “Someone has to keep him from getting himself killed.”

“Hey,” Tsukasa protests, but he presses her hand as she passes him in goodbye. “Stay safe out there.”

“I always am,” she mutters, and changes the backdrop.

.

It takes a few worlds before she finds something that catches her interest. Time feels fuzzy in the depths of world-hopping, so she often forgets to keep track, only counts the worlds as she passes them by. Has it been a month? Or a year?

She wonders how Tsukasa and Daiki did it for so long, all alone, before they met her and Yusuke.

Maybe they got used to the loneliness. Maybe that’s why it took them all so long to leave each other again.

.

She lands face-first in a world that feels like it’s on fire, and the first thing she notices when she manages to look up is that the sky is red.

About five minutes later, as she’s nursing a head wound, there’s footsteps rushing to her, and a girl’s voice asking, “Are you okay?” in concern.

Natsumi looks up into a small, round face, eyes wide in surprise, and gentle arms helping her sit up straight. “I’m fine,” she says, although she probably isn’t. “Where am I?”

“Oh, you’re in the Ganma world,” says the girl, more cheerfully than one might expect for announcing something like ‘you’re in the Ganma world.’ “I don’t know how you got here – we have all the portals monitored, but, well, you’re here, so I guess—”

Natsumi holds up a hand, stopping the girl mid-thought. “What’s the _Ganma world_?” she asks cautiously. “And who are you?”

“My name is Kanon,” she says. “I… live here.”

“You live here,” Natsumi repeats, looking up at the red sky, and wonders how anyone in any world could choose to live _here_.

Although, now that she looks at it more closely, the sky isn’t all red here – there are sweeping patches of blues and whites everywhere, clouds of light colors curling around the patches of blue and slowly, slowly pushing out the red.

“Yes,” says Kanon, and she’s beaming when Natsumi looks at her. “It’s not bad, actually. Here, let me show you around.”

.

Kanon’s definition of ‘not bad, actually,’ is probably a little different from Natsumi’s, but she finds that the Ganma world is not – at least, not anymore – all that different from a non-Ganma world. There are people, who live in houses, there’s a royal family that lives in a palace, and Kanon has a brother who’s a Rider.

Makoto is all lanky and wears blue and black, but that’s where his similarities to Daiki end. He smiles at her and shakes her hand and says, “It’s nice to meet another Rider in here. Most of them don’t stop by that much.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Natsumi says, but manages to keep most of the dryness out of her tone. Makoto doesn’t seem too offended.

“You can eat the food here,” Kanon tells her as she pokes curiously at the plate in front of her. “We’ve brought in a lot of human-world food. We’re trying to rehabilitate everyone. And there’s lots of takoyaki.”

Natsumi stares at her. “Human world?”

“Yeah,” says Kanon, pointing into the distance, as if you can see the human world from here. “That’s where all the humans live. Except for the ones that are Ganma, obviously. Or like me and Makoto.”

“You’re human but you live in the Ganma world?” Natsumi asks curiously.

“Oh, well, we’re not…” Kanon pauses, looking like she’s having a great internal debate. Makoto has disappeared before dinner, so he can’t help her with whatever it is. “We’re not technically human, I guess. But our friends are there. We live here because we have friends here, too. Like Prince Alain and Princess Alia.”

She tilts her head, considering, then adds, “Or Queen Alia, now. I always forget.”

“Right,” Natsumi says, feeling vaguely dizzy. Of all the worlds, she’d ended up in one where the Riders lived in hell. “Can I… see the human world, then?”

“Sure,” Kanon smiles at her, as if she isn’t a stranger who literally dropped into her home. “We’ll just have to ask Prince Alain for a portal.”

.

Prince Alain gives them a portal to the human world without too much fuss, although he does look at Natsumi oddly. Kanon leads her though, and the first breath there is like finally breathing in real air.

“It feels a lot better, doesn’t it?” Kanon sympathizes as Natsumi takes it all in – the blue sky, the trees stretching tall, the fresh winds, the sounds of human laughter all around. “I felt that too, the first time I came back.”

“What happened?” Natsumi asks as the two of them begin walking, Kanon tracing a path that’s obviously familiar to her, although she doesn’t ask about it.

“Well,” Kanon says slowly. “I died, down in the Ganma world. But there nobody really dies, they just store your soul in eyecons. Makoto came back to the human world to bargain for my soul. I was just an eyecon when I came back up here, but I could still feel it – the light and the beauty. The Ganma world used to be a lot worse, if you can believe it.”

Natsumi shivers. “I believe you,” she says. “How come you’re down there now if you died there once?”

Kanon shrugs, smiling. “I’m there to help Makoto and Prince Alain and Queen Alia. They’re my family. Prince Alain and Queen Alia took me and Makoto in when we were children. And it’s better there, now, I can breathe properly. And I want to help.”

Natsumi eyes her searchingly. “So, you died, and your brother brought you back?” She can’t help but think that Kanon must have been an incredible soul, to be bargained for, to be brought back to life, and to go back to the place that killed her after it all.

“Oh, not exactly,” Kanon laughs. “Takeru brought me back. He was dead, too, but he chose to save me instead of himself.”

She comes to a stop in front of a building that looks like a Buddhist temple. Natsumi stops short behind her and looks at her in surprise.

“Takeru is a Kamen Rider, too,” Kanon tells her, lifting a hand to knock on the door. “He’s alive now, too. Properly alive, not just a ghost.”

“Was he a ghost?” Natsumi asks slowly, trying to wrap her mind around it, but before Kanon can answer, the door opens and her human-Ganma world-guide gets swept up in a hug that makes Yusuke’s hugs look tame.

.

“A passing-through Kamen Rider!” Akari exclaims over her, a gleam in her eyes like she’s already planning on putting Natsumi in front of a microscope. “How strange – we’ve met other Kamen Riders, of course, we saw one called Ex-Aid just a few months ago but you say you come from… another world?’

“Something like that,” Natsumi says, taking one of Akari’s whiteboard markers and doodling circles on the board. “Parallel worlds, all existing just a few inches apart from each other. Each world has a Rider, or multiple Riders. And there are points of connection—people like me, who can hop from world to world.”

“So, was Ex-Aid from another world?” Kanon asks Akari, brow furrowed as she surveys Natsumi’s drawings.

“Hard to tell,” Akari muses, tapping her pen on her chin and getting ink everywhere. “Natsumi, would you mind staying to answer a few questions?”

“A few?” Natsumi asks, raising an eyebrow.

Akari smiles innocently. “Maybe a little more than a few.”

.

Their world is peaceful enough, despite the ever-dangerous connection to the Ganma world, that Natsumi ends up staying for far too long. She likes the comradery of the temple, Onari bustling around, Akari with her science, Kanon with her brightness. And there’s Javert, who is imperious-looking but offers to help her practice her moves, and Narita and Shibuya, who are always up to talk about nothing in particular. And she likes Takeru, who comes home every day from school positively glowing with delight.

He's so happy to be alive. They all are, she supposes. Makoto and Alain come by often enough, and she gets the feeling it’s only to make sure Takeru is still there, alive and warm and happy.

There’s a lot more of them, but at their core, they remind her of home – the photography studio, and Daiki lounging on the couch, sniping at Tsukasa, and Yusuke helping Grandpa cook dinner for everyone, and Tsukasa taking bad pictures and then complaining when Natsumi puts them in his ‘bad pictures’ pile.

“You miss home,” Kanon says matter-of-factly, watching Natsumi swirl her tea around in the cup. “Don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Natsumi says, exhaling a sigh. “But I like it here – I love it here. It’s calm and peaceful and… all of you are so happy.”

“Being happy isn’t some secret,” Kanon tells her gently. For being so young, she too often seems wise beyond her years. Maybe it’s a side-effect of dying, although Natsumi had died once and she hadn’t felt anything like this. “You find the people who make you happy, and you stay with them.”

Natsumi looks at her, searching for something, though she’s not sure what. “Then why do you leave?” she asks, and Kanon blinks, taken aback. “You and Makoto and Alain. You’re happy here, in the human world. Why do you go back to the Ganma world?”

“To make it better,” Kanon answers, no hesitation. “We have a duty to that world—it’s our world, too. And we have to help Queen Alia. And… maybe sometimes, people can belong to two different worlds. Or a lot of different worlds.”

Natsumi snorts, although she knows very well how true that is. “How would that work?” she asks anyway, just to test her.

“I don’t know,” Kanon admits, rubbing her hands together absentmindedly. “Maybe… if the people you love are from all different worlds. Maybe then you can’t just stay in one. Like I can’t, and Makoto can’t, because we love Prince Alain and Queen Alia. And… like you can’t.”

Natsumi stares down into her milky tea. “I can’t, huh?”

“No,” says a different voice. “You can’t.”

She looks up to see Tsukasa standing in the archway. Kanon jumps to her feet, but Tsukasa ignores her, looking only at Natsumi.

“Come home,” he says softly. “It’s been a long time.”

“Are you…” Kanon looks between the two of them, Tsukasa practically touching the ceiling of the small tea room, and Natsumi on the couch. “Are you a friend of Natsumi’s?”

“You could say that,” Tsukasa says with a smirk. Natsumi rolls her eyes. “You’re friends with those Riders out there, right?” he asks Kanon, who nods. “Could you go tell them I’ll be borrowing Natsumi for a bit?”

Kanon holds her ground. “How long is a bit?”

Tsukasa shrugs. “As long as she wants.”

Natsumi waves Kanon off with a sigh. “I’ll be fine.” She gets to her feet once Kanon has left and faces Tsukasa. “I was wondering when I’d finally catch you in one of these Rider worlds.”

“You’re really planning on staying here?” he asks, disbelieving.

Natsumi scoffs. “Of course not. I was going to come home.”

“When?” Tsukasa demands, a flash of hurt in his eyes. “It’s been a year, Natsumi. Even I never left for that long.”

“Oh, so we do everything according to how you do it?”

“That’s not what I meant.” His face softens and he reaches for her, hands touching her shoulders and keeping her anchored to the floor. “I just meant we miss you, that’s all.”

Natsumi takes a deep breath, looking away from him. Tsukasa’s gaze is too intense on the best of days, too much like staring into the eye of a storm.

 _Decade, the Destroyer of Worlds._ She still doesn’t know how he did it. How he survived with all of himself intact.

“I like it here,” she says carefully. “It’s nice—peaceful. They’re happy here.”

Tsukasa makes a face at her. “It can’t possibly be as nice as the photography studio.”

Someone coughs from the other room, which she gathers to mean they have an audience. Tsukasa ignores them, and so does she.

“They have Riders here,” Natsumi says. “They even have a way to cross into another world. What’s so different about it?”

“It doesn’t have _us_!”

“ _We_ don’t have _us_ ,” she snaps, and Tsukasa falls quiet. “We haven’t traveled together, all four of us, in years, Tsukasa. You always have your – your Rider missions, or the ones with the Sentais, or—or whatever. And Daiki has his things, and Yusuke has his—”

“So, we’ll go traveling again,” he insists. “Just the four of us. It’s not like it’s hard to gather us all up in one place. Haven’t you noticed how we all come back to Hikari Studios, no matter how long we’ve been away?”

Natsumi lets her edges blunt off. “And I come back, too,” she points out, feeling Tsukasa’s grip on her shoulders slip a little. “It’s just that sometimes it would be nice to come home and not have to wait for all of you.”

“Natsumi,” he sighs, and then his arms are folding around her in a crushing hug, one that catches her off guard for a good minute. “Come home. Just—just this once.”

It’s hard to say no to him sometimes. Natsumi pulls back with a sigh. “Just let me say goodbye.”

.

In the other room, she hugs Kanon, and spares a moment to wish that she had hugged Mai before she left, or Mayu.

“I think you’ll be happy, going home,” Kanon tells her after the others have murmured their goodbyes and hugged her and shaken her hand. “You can just tell when you belong somewhere, you know?”

“Yeah,” Natsumi says, glancing over at Tsukasa, who’s leaning against the wall and pretending not to be impatient. “I miss home. I miss _them_. But… I’ve learned a lot, traveling on my own. None of us are the same people we were when we started.”

“I know what you mean,” Kanon says, laughing a little, brushing her hair back. “Sometimes Makoto and Prince Alain, they still treat me like a little girl, but… I’m not. I’ve been through a lot, just like them. Maybe sometimes you have to grow apart before you can grow back together.”

Natsumi mulls on that for a moment. “You’re pretty smart, for a Ganma girl,” she tells her, and Kanon grins.

“Come back and visit, okay?” Kanon tells her, hugging her again. “We’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” Natsumi says with a smile, before shouldering her bag and turning to Tsukasa. “Ready?”

“Been ready,” he tells her, but he doesn’t seem that disgruntled as he opens up a portal back to their world.

Before they leave, Natsumi lifts her hand to wave goodbye to everyone at the temple, and when she drops it, Tsukasa catches it in his. He doesn’t look at her, but there’s a half-smile on his face as he interlaces their fingers and takes her through the worlds again.

.

She stumbles into the main room of Hikari Studios to find Daiki and Yusuke sitting at the table, arguing over a board game.

“Natsumi!” Yusuke says in delight, abandoning the game to jump up and hug her. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Natsumi says, having gone through too many hugs today, but she can never refuse Yusuke one. “What’s going on here?”

Grandpa pokes his head into the room from the kitchen. “We’re having chicken for dinner,” he announces. “I hope you’re hungry!”

“Always,” Tsukasa answers, walking around the table and dropping onto the couch. “And I brought Natsumi back just to enjoy your cooking.”

Grandpa, looking pleased, disappears back into the kitchen. Kiva-la unhooks herself from Natsumi’s bag and begins fluttering around the three boys, thoroughly annoying each of them in her own special way.

“Did not miss her,” Daiki huffs, flicking Kiva-la over to Yusuke, who accepts her easily. “Did you bring us any gifts?”

“Only the gift of knowing that there’s a whole world of treasures out there that you have yet to steal,” Natsumi tells him, patting him on the arm. Daiki makes a face at her, and it is so startlingly normal, so much like _home_ , that she starts laughing suddenly.

“You missed us, huh?” Tsukasa says smugly.

“I missed a lot of things about this place, but never you,” she says, the words for all three of them although she walks over to Tsukasa as she says them. All three of them turn hurt and offended looks on her; Yusuke’s is the only genuine one.

“Because,” Natsumi continues, sitting down next to him with a smile, “I took you three with me everywhere I went.”

There’s a moment of silence that follows this, which Daiki breaks with, “That’s ridiculous. There’s only one of me, and you can’t have me when I’m not there.”

Natsumi smiles at him, then looks over at Tsukasa. “So, you brought me home to make fun of Daiki?”

“Yes,” he says promptly. Daiki throws a pillow at him. “And so we could all have a meal together again. All five of us – and Kiva-la,” he acknowledges as Kiva-la buries herself in his hair with a squeak.

“Like old times?” Natsumi suggests.

Tsukasa grins. “Like old times.”

Yusuke sits back down in his chair and props his feet up on the armrest of their sofa. “And this time,” he says, beaming, “we’re not gonna let you just leave again for months and months, Natsumi.”

“I might,” Daiki mutters. Yusuke digs his elbow into Daiki’s thigh and waits for him to sit down, which he does with a yelp.

“You would really like Takeru,” Natsumi tells Yusuke. “He’s a lot like you.”

“Take us with you, then,” Daiki says, tossing his hair out of his eyes. “Next time. We can all go see your mysterious ghost friends.”

“And rob them?”

Daiki smirks at her. “You know me so well, Natsu-melon.”

Natsumi laughs, feeling her heart lighten, and sits back against Tsukasa’s arm as the argument over the board game starts up again, interjected only by Grandpa’s calling them to dinner.

It feels like home. She thinks about Mayu and Mai and Kanon, thinks about all the other people she met in their worlds, in other worlds, thinks of how, no matter how bad things got, they always knew where their home was. Even if it was two places at once. Even if they left, even if they might leave in the future.

It’s been a long few years, but she supposes that’s the nice thing about home – no matter how far you spend away, it’ll still be there when you get back.


End file.
